“Why English Linguistic and Literary Analysis Fails Scottish Literature: Teaching an AI to Recognise Scots Humour”

This article addresses a fundamental question in the digital analysis of Scottish literature: can AI literary tools, trained predominantly on English critical traditions, recognise Scots humour as a distinct national literary mode?

Using S.R. Crockett’s story “Mac’s Enteric Fever” as a test case, the author demonstrates that AI correctly identifies every formal feature of Scots humour — deadpan narration, documentary precision, parenthetical deflation, mock-heroic diction, retrospective framing — yet consistently fails to recognise these as constituting Scots humour rather than as universal techniques creating separate comic effects.

The article traces a teaching process using Crockett’s own 1895 essay “Scottish National Humour” as the corrective framework, revealing both the capabilities and the cultural blind spots of current AI literary analysis.

Wider implications for Kailyard criticism, the critical dismissal of Victorian Scottish regional fiction, and the need for culturally specific analytical frameworks in Scottish literature are explored. The article is itself written in the mode of Scots humour.

An article from the Reading Room of the S.R. Crockett Online Museum.